Detection of Fetal Copy Number Aberrations by Shallow Sequencing of Maternal Blood Samples

Motivation: Numerous genetic disorders can be detected in prenatal diagnosis using Chorionic Villus Sampling. As this brings a 1:100 chance for miscarriage, this method is only applied when the fetus is suspected to have an increased chance at having an aberration. It is known that a small percentage of DNA in maternal plasma is of fetal origin...

Translocation of Heterogeneous Polymers through a Nanopore

Translocating a chain of different beads through a very small pore can be used as a first step of modelling a DNA chain that passes through a nanopore. This translocation process offers a variety of possibilities in chemical and biological processes, for instance rapid DNA sequencing. In this thesis the chain is modelled as a polymer with...